music & interactive audiofor games

With over 9 years of game development experience in audio for award winning games, and over 16 years as a professional musician/composer, Steve Pardo creates, produces, and directs emotional and expansive music and audio for games and interactive media.

Full-service interactive music composition

From start to finish, Steve works independently and with his team at SkewSound to complete original scores for interactive and linear media. He is a recognized composer (ASCAP), multi-instrumentalist, producer, orchestrator, and music engineer. Out of his home studio, Steve can write, orchestrate, perform, work with instrumentalists, mix, and master finished and prepared music for in-game use. From there, he can collaborate with teams and implement directly into audio middleware (Wwise/FMOD) and the game engine (Unity/Unreal).

His in-depth and innovative work with interactive and generative music systems at Harmonix Music Systems absolutely inspires the way he writes, all while focusing on melody and texture first as a solid foundation for each project's core design, art, and narrative direction.

Steve has composed the soundtrack for a wide range of games, including as Gigantic, Grim Dawn, Chariot, Super Beat Sports, The Magic Circle, Fantasia: Music Evolved, and many others.

Innovative music design & audio direction

Steve currently serves as Lead Composer and Sound Designer at Harmonix Music Systems, known for such renowned award winning and cultural watershed games and franchises such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Dance Central.

With his audio direction work on Rock Band VR (Harmonix/Oculus), he has become a leading audio designer for virtual reality and generative music systems (US patent for "Improvised Guitar Simulation"), while rethinking the possibilities for the music game genre. His work was documented in the Sound on Sound interview, Steve Pardo: Creating Rock Band VR(nominated for "Best Game Audio Article, Publication, or Broadcast" - GANG Awards 2017).

Steve has been recognized for his audio design and direction work with nominations for Rock Band VR ("Best VR Audio" - GANG Awards 2017) and for Super Beat Sports ("Best Sound Design for a Casual/Social Game" - GANG Awards 2017).

community & education

Steve is incredibly active in the game audio community at large. He teaches classes on game audio and music design at MIT and the Berklee College of Music, and has given talks NYU and Boston Post Mortem. He currently serves on the Industry Advisory Board for the Sound Arts MA program at Northwestern University.

original music projects

Outside of game audio, Steve is also an active and performing/recording saxophone player, and currently leads his own group, the Steve Pardo Trio. He produces music with his wife, Amy, under the name Tweet Tweet, and released their first album, The Bearer, in 2017.

He also plays electric guitar with Opal Puckett, and was a member of Spirit Kid from 2010-2012.